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Felix Sorin lit one of six torches at the State Opening Ceremony of Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem in 2025.
Felix Sorin
Felix Sorin
Felix Sorin was born in 1932 in the city of Mogilev, Byelorussia, to Frida and Natan, the youngest of their three children. Natan was a tailor by trade and a communist activist, but despite his political leanings, the family spoke Yiddish at home and observed the Jewish holidays.
In 1939, the Soviets entered Eastern Poland. Natan was sent to Oszmiana for work, so the family moved there with him.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the Sorins fled eastward. In the ensuing chaos, Felix was separated from his family and was left alone in German-occupied territory, where a stranger advised him not to reveal his Jewish identity or his father’s communist activism.
Felix roamed from place to place until he reached Minsk, where he was incarcerated in the ghetto and witnessed the murder of Jews. He escaped, and upon arrest, passed himself off as a Russian orphan and was sent to an orphanage. Several months later, he was suspected of being Jewish and was sent to Minsk to stand before a committee. At the hearing, he insisted that he wasn’t Jewish, his claim corroborated by the fact that he was uncircumcised. Committee member Vasily Orlov supported his case, and the committee secretary, who knew Felix, did not expose his true identity. After the war, Orlov was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
Felix was returned to the orphanage and did not reveal his identity until the Red Army liberated the region in the summer of 1944. In the last months of the occupation, the Germans evacuated young boys to Germany for forced labor, but Felix escaped from the orphanage and evaded deportation.
After liberation, Felix feared that no one in his family had survived. The director of the orphanage suggested that he register as a Russian, but he insisted on registering as a Jew, stating that this was his real identity. He also hoped that this would help his parents locate him, should they still be alive. He was advised by the orphanage to contact the authorities for assistance in finding his parents, and in this way, he received notification that his father was alive and serving in the Red Army.
One day, Felix’s older brother Isaak appeared at the orphanage, with the glad tidings that their parents had succeeded in fleeing eastward and survived. Isaak and their father Natan had both fought in the ranks of the Red Army, and Frida and Felix’s older sister Roza had managed to stay alive in the Soviet Union. Isaak took Felix with him, and the brothers were reunited with their parents in Moldova.
Felix studied at the Odessa Polytechnic and became a researcher and lecturer.
In 1992, Felix and his family immigrated to Israel. He often meets youth, students and educators, tells his story at Yad Vashem, and is active in survivor organizations. Felix and Ida z”l have two children, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.